Tiger Woods is not to golf as Lance Armstrong was to cycling. This is largely due to the fact golf is a sport of skill, judgment, of eye, and of mind. Meanwhile, cycling is a sport of endurance, power, drugs, equipment, and if it comes to it, tactics. While golf can be enhanced with PEDs, doping is cycling’s life blood.

But as Lance “I never failed a drug test” Armstrong has faded from view, the media remains fixated on Tiger Woods despite the fact he’s far from being the same golfer he was in his pre-bimbo eruption days. Back in the pre-scandal days, Woods somehow managed to stare guys down and… they’d blink. Today, at least in the majors, it’s always Woods who blinks. Sometimes, he even seems to close his eyes.

But the media still has a Tiger Woods fixation and the evidence that Woods is still favored by the media is heard in their words. It’s never “Woods,” instead, it’s always “Tiger,” even when he’s playing like a dog. (A PGA dog, but still a dog.)

Phil Mickelson and perhaps Bubba Watson sometimes approach the exclusive first name usage, but never get all the way there like Tiger does. The networks cut to Woods even when he’s out of contention for one basic reason: he’s Tiger Woods, the former great who people remember as being great and who someday, some hope, might return to greatness.

So why is the media so hung up on Woods? There are multiple explanations, many of them interrelated and reinforcing. There’s the money, that is, the media’s rooting might be based on Woods’ success because he draw a ratings crowd; he’s the multiracial guy in a predominantly white sport; there’s the hero turned villain who lost it all angle (note: he didn’t lose it all) who is now clawing his way back to the top, except in majors; you also have the chase for Jack Nicklaus’ majors record storyline. Finally, don’t forget the money, the gigantic gamble Nike has made on promoting and riding their fallen star. (Fallen stars if you include Armstrong.)

Even though Woods remains undedicated to the gentlemanly aspects of golf (smashing clubs, cursing and tantrums, rulebook non-compliance), these things will fade from mind as he enters the twilight of his golfing career, that is, right now. Soon, he’ll be as beloved as Arnie and Jack themselves. Why? Because he was once Tiger Woods, that’s why.

Michael Bloomberg is notorious for wanting to protect us… from ourselves… at any cost (to us, of course, not to him). It’s for your own good, is Bloomberg’s sometimes hidden message that he passively-aggressively bleats to us, often with profound exasperation.

Barack Obama is basically a better spoken, bi-racial version of the same man and more and more people are starting to understand this. And they don’t like it.

On Friday, President Obama spoke to us about surveillance as though we were precocious children. He proceeded as if widespread objections to his policies can be dispatched like a parent answers an eight-year-old who has formally protested her bedtime. He is so proud that we’ve matured enough to take an interest in our civil liberties! Why, he used to think just like us when he was younger, and promises to consider our arguments. But some decisions just have to be made by the grownups. Do we know how much he loves us? Can we even imagine how awful he would feel if anything bad ever happened while it was still his job to ensure our safety? *

Ignore the questionable use of “precocious” in the block quote above and concentrate on the main point: like Bloomberg, Obama lives inside a profoundly thick bubble which protects him from the daily toils and troubles of living in the real world. And from within their respective bubbles, both men are able to promulgate decisions that their true minions tend to describe as wise, necessary, mature, thoughtful, compassionate, and the likes. The law of the land? Meh… it means what the ruling class wants it to mean.

Meanwhile, pro-freedom is not one of the terms commonly used to describe the myriad Bloomberg and/or Obama initiatives.

(It’s a sobering thought to ponder we might actually get the government we deserve.)

And what about that asterisk is the first block quote?

*Alas, Obama-as-daddy-figure isn’t even wise and measured with his heavy-handedness, like Cliff Huxtable. Instead, America is stuck with one of those control-freak dads. It’s as if, instead of the girl in the No Doubt song not being allowed to drive late at night, she can cruise as needed, but with a location tracker. Plus her dad hacking into the email of every boy in her social circle — not that he has time to read most of their private communications, but who knows what might one day come in handy? Did I mention she’s now 31, and tried to get a restraining order, only to have a judge throw out the case because she couldn’t prove dad was still listening?

We used to frequently say, “It’s a free country.” Now, it’s become a Mike Bloomberg/Barry Obama “Do as I say and not as I do” world.

[During] Australia’s election campaign, opposition leader Tony Abbott told a gathering of conservative party faithful on Monday that no one is “the suppository of all wisdom.”

While Abbott is a former Rhodes scholar, Barack Obama’s are less impressive: he went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, and likely based on his test scores, is still refusing to release his academic record.

And yet, Abbott, while attempting to make a point about knowledge (it’s good) and truth (no one holds a monopoly), missed the conventional liberal wisdom. That is, isn’t it common knowledge within the media that the left holds all rights to wisdom, goodness, and light? And that the left’s many “nudges” are really only for our own good because we’re too stupid to make decisions for ourselves?

Still, there remain many—for example, Janet Daley—who remain politically incorrect, and based on the outcomes seen, don’t view Barack Obama as the American suppository of wisdom. (A mere suppository perhaps…)

And as America has been infuriatingly slow to learn, an idiot with initiative is a very dangerous thing.

What are three clues the White House is lying? 1) The President’s lips are moving, 2) Jay Carney is engaging the press, and 3) the Administration’s minions are typing white papers.

As it regards the unlimited Obama surveillance state from the Administration’s just-released white paper on the issue:

The government [better, “The Administration’”], however, said it believes Congress intended a broad concept of relevance when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act in 2001 and later amended it. That law authorizes the government to collect “any tangible things” when there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation” to obtain foreign intelligence information or to protect against international terrorism.

Some lawmakers have said that when they passed the law they did not think that they were authorizing the bulk collection of virtually all Americans’ phone records. How could that, they said, be relevant to an authorized investigation?

Of course, if “the government” was serious about what Congress intended… it could ask the Congress (they’re the ones referenced above – the “some lawmakers” – who said this was not their intent).

As it is, the things now condoned by the Administration were condemned by Candidate Obama. Or as the saying goes, “Where I stand depends on where I sit.” And sitting on the throne of extra-legal totalitarianism is where Mr. Obama rests (when he’s not vacationing).

This Administration makes Kennedy’s look zipped-up, Nixon’s look ethical, Carter’s look competent, and Clinton’s look prudent. Mr. Obama’s goal with the American public seems to be to anesthetize us to lies, distortions, and misrepresentations rather than taking a principled position regarding the very Constitution he and his sycophants so often claims he’s an expert on.

The Obama Administration is not the Stasi. After all, the Stasi notoriously created a nation-state of informants.

Instead of pesky informants, the Obama Administration prefers the “hoovering” of all electronic data, foreign and domestic, as well as the use of drones to spy on the citizenry. (And what does a drone do in such cases? It’s one of a million surveillance cameras, only it’s in the sky instead of on the ground.)

But rest assured, Barack “The Surveiller” Obama has made the determination with regards to your privacy and these programs are well worth the intrusion into every corner of the American life. It’s a small price to pay.

(The problem isn’t that these things are illegal; the problem is that they are legal.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Here is Nadler—maybe—via his mouthpiece, today:

James Owens, a spokesman for Nadler, provided a statement on Sunday morning, a day after this article was published, saying: “I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.” Owens said he couldn’t comment on what assurances from the Obama administration Nadler was referring to, and said Nadler was unavailable for an interview.

Given the massive amount of information that can be held on a thumb drive (and that multiple thumb drives may be in play; you can get a 32 gig thumb drive for less than twenty bucks), is Glenn Greenwald just waiting for the right time to make a liar of (almost) everyone?

The surveillance state is simply not credible as the basic assertion of the watchers/gatherers appears to be this: “good” Americans are wholly surveilled while their privacy remains intact. Or, in some sort of paradox that makes sense only to the watchers and gatherers, we are monitored but free.

The White House, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the record for this article. A senior intelligence official agreed to answer questions if not identified.

So based on the above, we likely have authorized leaks from an unidentified source. What’s comes next? The unnamed source’s plea for trust, naturally. Here’s what the leaker says:

“We have rich oversight across three branches of government. I’ve got an [inspector general] here, a fairly robust legal staff here . . . and there’s the Justice Department’s national security division,” the official said. “For those things done under court jurisdiction, the courts are intrusive in my business, appropriately so, and there are two congressional committees. It’s a belts-and-suspenders-and-Velcro approach, and inside there’s rich auditing.”

This might be the sort of “rich oversight” the IRS is subject to on non-profits, along with the associated “rich auditing.” (“Rich auditing” may in fact be code for “political targeting.” And as it turns out, the IRS is the one who does the auditing, not the public. We really don’t know much regarding the true genesis of the IRS scandal except that it’s a massive oversight failure. And ironically, those at the top often hide behind claims of “privacy.”)

Next, industry wants the top cover that only government can provide (and government is happy to do so. It makes the story sound so much better.)

When the New York Times revealed the warrantless surveillance of voice calls, in December 2005, the telephone companies got nervous. One of them, unnamed in the report, approached the NSA with a request. Rather than volunteer the data, at a price, the “provider preferred to be compelled to do so by a court order,” the report said. Other companies followed suit. The surveillance court order that recast the meaning of business records “essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk telephony metadata from business records that it had” under Bush’s asserted authority alone.

So there you have it: meet the new boss, same as the old boss (except the new boss has a government approved program which is the same as the old, decider-approved program).

And what about the internet?

The NSA calls Internet metadata “digital network information.” Sophisticated analysis of those records can reveal unknown associates of known terrorism suspects. Depending on the methods applied, it can also expose medical conditions, political or religious affiliations, confidential business negotiations and extramarital affairs.

What permits the former and prevents the latter is a complex set of policies that the public is not permitted to see. “You could do analyses that give you more information, but the law and procedures don’t allow that,” a senior U.S. intelligence lawyer said.

We saw how that worked in preventing the Boston Marathon terror attacks, didn’t we? So where are we? We’re all the way back to where we started, with the Administration saying “trust me, trust the law, trust my procedures.”

The agency and its advocates maintain that its protection of that data is subject to rigorous controls and oversight by Congress and courts. For the public, it comes down to a question of unverifiable trust.

“The constraints that I operate under are much more remarkable than the powers that I enjoy,” said the senior intelligence official who declined to be named.

When asked why the NSA could not release an unclassified copy of its “minimization procedures,” which are supposed to strip accidentally collected records of their identifying details, the official suggested a reporter submit a freedom-of-information request.

So the final non sequiter is that the Administration’s leaker tells the reporter he/she’s leaking to that ‘A FOIA request should be submitted.’

After all this, if you’re going to give the leak, can’t you also include information which actually enhances your position? Why fall back on asking the leak-taker to file a FOIA request (which is far from timely and would be redacted to the point of incomprehensibility)? Good grief, man, you’re already leaking!

The failure to leak on “minimization procedures” is telling. This entire story, a gigantic “trust me” tale, is just like everything else coming out of the vast surveillance state: it comes across as disinformation and narrowly ranges between dissembling and wholly non-credible.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler’s disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president.”

The disconnect between what people say and the truth has arguably never been larger.

Leading the way, at the moment, is James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. He’s the guy who said the national surveillance state was “not wittingly” collecting data on Americans. Clapper could easily have offered to answer the question truthfully in a closed hearing or to take a question for the record, both of which are done all the time with Congress, but he didn’t. Instead, he lied and it’s far more reasonable to assume that all your electronic transactions are being catalogued, correlated, and characterized by both industry and government.

Then there’s the President who falsely said Congress had been “fully briefed on these [surveillance] programs” when they hadn’t. Why would the President say such a thing? Easy: it’s a habit. He wants to 1) blame others and 2) avoid uncomfortable problems. Yes, misery loves company. The President, lacking credibility, also mechanically reoffered the standard “I welcome this debate” throwaway line as it regards the depth and breadth of the surveillance state. He welcomes no such thing.

Meanwhile, the NSA’s “industry partners” craft careful statements which imply no knowledge of government data calls while avoiding the unpleasant reality that they’re gathering all sorts of your information and are doing their very best to exploit their haul while also handing it off to the feds.

The Administration’s actions have shown they do not welcome transparency of any sort, except as it concerns crowing about victories and success stories, even when this crowing compromises national security. Mr. Obama says the global war on terror is over, even as the government’s GWOT actions continue unabated and intrusions into the lives of the citizenry expand.

And of course, White House spokesman Jay Carney is an entire case study unto himself.

Discrimination from the IRS is said to be caused by a pair of rogue agents in Cincinnati while in reality it was a big (88 people, so far; expect more), Washington DC-driven (that is, it was a top-down effort) initiative, in every way.

The Senate is working on “comprehensive immigration reform” which most Americans would rightly call amnesty. The usual suspects, both liberal and pseudo-conservative, demand Republican participation (that is, voting for amnesty) or else they say conservatives will face extinction.

Finally, the Benghazi security debacle was spontaneously caused by a YouTube video until that lie could not be sustained.

Regardless of the President’s protestations of innocence, most people know and accept that this fish rots from the head (and not from the tail). Similarly, the people of Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Egypt, China, Turkey, et al., know of these—and even more rotten—things. Maybe that’s why sales of one particular edition of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four have gone up almost 10000 percent since the confirmation of the great American surveillance state.

The real lesson is simple… and sad. Americans are being deceived and mislead with malice and forethought and on a level once thought impossible, or even absurd. Why? To further an agenda of power and control. So instead of watching what they say—the “they” being the politicos and their courtiers—let’s resolve ourselves to watch what they do. And as required, to fight it.

The total net worth of all the households in the United States is around $70 trillion. Yes, that’s a lot.

However, a family of viable-looking estimates regarding the obligations of the United States government across the next thirty years put the country between $72 trillion to $107 trillion to $120 trillion in the red. (“You know,” Buck Turgidson would say, “depending on the breaks.”) That is, those red numbers are the projected deficits/debts after you’ve paid your taxes.

… Michael Hayden told TPM yesterday that the NSA probably knows by now exactly what data Snowden has in his possession and therefore what leaks are still to come. Maybe that forced the agency to reveal more than they initially wanted to in their briefings this week with Congress: If they withheld something and then the world found out thanks to Snowden,, a lot of angry senators and representatives would want to know why they were kept in the dark.

(Nine tech companies have already been tagged as Prism players, so will the outrage go off scale when we find out about the rumored 50 participants?)

So even if this is all legal, does anyone think just because a law is in place, it’s congenitally Constitutional, desirable, justified, supported, and/or necessary?

(And what are we to think when someone, say a chief justice in a 5-4 ruling, turns himself into a political pretzel in ruling on Barack Obamacare in order to avoid being tarred as “political”?)

An obvious truth is no one believes the executive branch, the legislature, and the judiciary always get things right. After all, not even the President, the very face of the government leviathan, believes this, witness his outrage—staged or real—with regard to Citizens United.

So the lesson, assuming there is one, can be reduced to this: our government is composed of flawed people who make flawed decisions based on… what? The time of day, self-interest, glycemic level, mood, eternal truths, expediency, and naked politics all come to mind. But the more resources the government controls and the less transparent their activities, the greater the opportunity for misbehavior, whether great or small.

And since many view the Constitution as a mere guide, which is “living and breathing,” does it really matter a source of truth?

The oath of office requires the individual to practice fidelity to the Constitution. So if the Constitution is in a constant state of redefinement, what is the individual really honoring?

And in the end, who should be trusted to run our lives, the ruling class (that is, the vast government bureaucracy like the IRS, the Justice Department, the surveillance state, etc.) or its citizens?

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama relied on a standard applause line, a promise that his health-care plan would “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” Cue cheers — or jeers if you were a health-policy expert. For them, his vow was ridiculous. There was no time frame attached to the promise. There was no plan for realizing it. It was change no one quite believed in.

Although we applaud Klein for finding an acorn, we can’t help but wonder how he would characterize the issue had it been James Clapper who had offered the misrepresentation instead of the President.

And sadly, almost as soon as Klein has found an acorn of truth, it slips from his grasp into the fermented funk of predictable liberalism: that is, Klein—and America—needs Congress to do something for some reason to someone regarding something else stat:

[There should now be] an explosion of efforts in Congress to capitalize on this moment. We should be pushing further and faster to reform the health-care system, even as we argue about the expansion of health insurance under Obamacare. Instead, Congress is wasting the moment, doing an even worse job addressing the subject of health costs than Obama did in 2008.

Klein’s pleading is forced to ignore the fact it was the then-Democrat Congress—who had to pass it before they could read it—along with the President, who gave us the failed government leviathan called Barack Obamacare.

Ezra, next time try quitting when you’re ahead. Half a column—even a paragraph—that’s reasonable, accurate, and understandable is far better than a longer one that isn’t.

By 1976, McDonalds had served 20 billion hamburgers. Today? More. Many more.

But McDonalds has a volume-based rival, the government’s electronic surveillance programs. As it is, the government (that is, the Obama Administration) has pulled way ahead with a billion electronic transactions per day (emphasis added).

“Right now, we have a situation where the executive branch is getting a billion records a day, and we’re told they would not query that data except pursuant to very clear standards,” he [Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.)] said. “But we don’t have courts making sure those standards are always followed.”

As the President might have said, “This surveillance state? You didn’t build that. We built it… actually, we paid to have it built. For your own good. Trust us, we’re pre-law…”

So beyond the practice of having the federal government track and characterize your calls, watch your credit card transactions, and scrutinize everything you do on line, can we talk about the real issue at hand? That is, is the government’s cure to terrorism (and a great many other things) worse than the disease?

While our current President has decided for our benefit that a near-total loss of privacy for the ruled is a small price to pay, others—those losing their privacy—might feel quite differently.

Sadly, the decider and his handlers (since the whole thing is classified), point out they’d welcome a “conversation” about government eavesdropping except that it’s classified to begin with and therefore can’t be discussed. Ironically, expect the news on the surveillance state to now dribble out from within the Administration in a way that’s leaked to benefit their agenda. (Unless some in the media already have a large data dump on the surveillance state queued up and ready to hit the fan.)

In the meantime, the welfare/security/surveillance-state warning light is illuminated steadily. Will the President take any meaningful action to enhance the privacy of the citizenry or will he keep things on auto-pilot as we continue down our slippery glide-slope?

All signs point towards auto-pilot; auto-pilot helps sustain the power and control agenda of the ruling class.

Before the Verizon and Prism reveals, Barack Obama was thought to have planned to pummel visiting China President Xi Jinping on the issues of Chinese hacking and cyber security.

However, given the behind-the-curtain look at the depth and breadth of the American surveillance state, it’s more likely that Xi asked Mr. Obama for some pointers. (Similarly, Xi might also consider an off-the-record visit with AG Eric Holder regarding unfreedom of the press and with the IRS on the punitive use of the federal bureaucracy.)

Perhaps, as he’s doing with America’s nuclear deterrent force, Mr. Obama will choose to unilaterally cyber disarm, so as to demonstrate our good faith towards China.

The myth surrounding JFK was called Camelot. The reality of the Obama kingdom may be called Scamalot and it’s enough to drive one to drink.(Scanalot would also be acceptable description of the President’s kingdom, but in total, it’s less comprehensive and therefore, less accurate.)

Yes, as it regards life in America as a government worker (or a government-industrial complex worker), it’s enough to make one seek Booz. That is Booz, as in employment at Booz Allen Hamilton. From Slate:

According to the Guardian, [leakmeister/whistleblower Edward] Snowden is a 29-year-old high school dropout who trained for the Army Special Forces before an injury forced him to leave the military. His IT credentials are apparently limited to a few “computer” classes he took at a community college in order to get his high school equivalency degree—courses that he did not complete. His first job at the NSA was as a security guard. Then, amazingly, he moved up the ranks of the United States’ national security infrastructure: The CIA gave him a job in IT security. He was given diplomatic cover in Geneva. He was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contractor, which paid him $200,000 a year to work on the NSA’s computer systems.

Let’s note what Snowden is not: He isn’t a seasoned FBI or CIA investigator. He isn’t a State Department analyst. He’s not an attorney with a specialty in national security or privacy law.

Instead, he’s the IT guy, and not a very accomplished, experienced one at that.

Chances are the government was paying Booz around $500K per year to have Snowden support them.